Yaesu Fusion with WIRESx from Lake Brownwood

My first use of Yaesu Fusion with WIRESx from Lake Brownwood in August of 2016.

Every year my wife’s family meets at Lake Brownwood, in Brownwood, TX, for a family reunion. The location where we stay isn’t always the same, but we have been in the same place for the last 3 or 4 years.

Naturally, I bring some radio gear with me. Sometimes I will bring my portable HF go-kit, but this time I only brought my HTs. I have a radio bag that I recently put together, that carries 4 different HTs. I call it my “digital bag” because it has a DMR, DSTAR and Yaesu Fusion HT. Along for the ride is also my Wouxun KG-UV8E Triband radio so that I can listen to the 220MHz band.

Of course there are no DMR repeaters in that part of the State….yet. (I’m working on it). So I checked Repeaterbook for some YSF and DSTAR repeaters. I was pleasantly surprised to find a YSF repeater in Early, TX – and even more surprised when I could hit it from my FT1DR HT, standing inside of my lake cabin, and able to connect via WIRESx to the repeater and change rooms.

Thanks to Rick, WD9ARW, for putting up the Early repeater and allowing us to use it. I connected to the repeater from my FT1DR radio and found it was in the CENTEX room. I changed rooms over to the CQ-TX-JOHNSON room, where the Johnson County repeater usually stays, and I spoke with Cevan, K5ORN, for about 20 minutes or so. WD9ARW joined us also and told us he was happy that someone was using the repeater.

This was a fun QSO. One of the things that I think DMR lacks is the ability to connect 1 repeater to another specific repeater, without keying up an entire talkgroup. YSF has this ability through WIRESx, so it was good to be able to use it and see how it worked.

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Who Am I?

My name is Jason, callsign kc5hwb, and I have been a Ham Operator in North Texas since 1994.
I created this blog to share my experiences with ham radio. There are many aspects of this hobby that are new and exciting. I'll share my experiences here about them.
Find me on the following DFW Area Repeaters:
147.1-pl110.9
442.175+ pl110.9
441.900+ pl110.9
DMR TEXAS STATEWIDE and DFW LOCAL
224.800- pl110.9